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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Leadership Secret Five: Honor Success and Celebrate Victory

Leadership Secret Five: Honour Success and Celebrate Victory

Anthony (Tony) Robbins

Great leaders are constantly finding ways to honor their key people and celebrate their success. Extraordinary leaders understand that there's only one thing that makes people happy long term and that's progress. Progress equals happiness. Even if you are not where you want to be, if you can begin to make an immediate improvement in your body, in your relationship, in your company, in your division—if you can do something physical, something real that people can see and measure—you'll find that people will start to tap into the power of progress.

The real question to answer is, do you tend to exclusively focus on what people fail to achieve? Or do you capture their victories and honor them publicly? We all know that great leaders know to correct in private and praise in public. Waiting to praise until the ultimate outcome is achieved is a significant mistake made by many good leaders who have not yet tapped into their true greatness.

Every mother knows if she's ever going to get her child out of diapers she can't wait until the ultimate victory when they make it to the toilet with no spills. You have to be able to cheer along the way. As graphic as this metaphor may be, many of us don't realize that great leaders are not just made, they are discovered, rewarded for progress, and honored so consistently that their hunger to become better is never-ending and because of this they ultimately start achieving results that few could ever expect.

Great leaders find the way to appreciate progress in themselves and progress in others. This is also the antidote to the sense of overwhelm that so many people feel when the task is so large. How would you rate your constant and never-ending search for the good that people are accomplishing? The progress that they are making? What actions would you take to start acknowledging more progress to deepen your leadership capacity and your bond with your people?